Connecting the Dots: Top news stories for Thursday, September 22

Georgia inmate Troy Davis was on death row for over two decades, but was executed Wednesday night, despite the protests of hundreds of thousands of supporters worldwide. The event raised the hackles of anti-death penalty activists everywhere, including the Reverend Al Sharpton, who said he believed Davis did not kill police officer Mark MacPhail – or at least that his case had “established much, much reasonable doubt”…

Two UC Berkeley graduates heard better news this week, as they were finally released from Iranian prison on a million-dollar bail after two years occupying a single jail cell. They’d been hiking in the Kurdish region in July 2009 when they were arrested and accused of espionage…

The mandate to release inmates from California state prisons and place them in county jails is still facing its biggest obstacle: funding. Governor Jerry Brown promises that he will get an initiative on the 2012 ballot that will guarantee the funds necessary, preferably with a Constitutional guarantee. This may mean tax increases, however, which is always a tough sell to the Republican Party…

Increasing taxes could also be a tough sell to Bay Area residents, as U.S. Census data puts the Bay Area’s poverty rate at 11 percent. That’s higher than it has been at any point over the last 30 years…

Still, the San Francisco Chronicle approached the census data differently, noting that at least the Bay Area hasn’t suffered as much as the rest of California – or the nation – when it comes to income levels. Household income actually went up a few percent in San Francisco and Contra Costa counties…

From San Francisco to Contra Costa County and beyond, there may still not be enough income for registered nurses. Today, tens of thousands of nurses from 34 hospitals in northern and central California are heading to the picket lines. It’s the largest movement of its kind in years in an effort to protest hundreds of cutbacks in employee benefits and patient services…

In order to combat the cutbacks in San Francisco, the city’s board of supervisors passed an ordinance mandating local hires for local businesses. It sounds good on paper, but some say it leaves room for loopholes. For example, the requirement mandating “local” only requires prospective employees to have lived in San Francisco for a week…

The jury is also still out regarding the battle against Proposition 8, which outlawed same-sex marriage in California in 2008. There is still no agreement among gay rights advocates as to whether it’d be best to take the issue back to voters in 2012, or save the money and energy and wait to hear how the issue fares in federal court…

Environmental protection is a hot-button issue at the federal level, too, as Congress battles over funding the EPA. But air pollution in national parks is at a three-year high, and the highest-rated were in California – Sequoia, Kings Canyon, and Joshua Tree National Park all exceeded the EPA’s standard for ozone pollution this year.